eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

05/05/2018

Saudade

Nostalgia REVIEW

I should be frank. This movie is melancholy incarnate. Its title is Nostalgia but its central theme is a Portuguese word, “saudade” – a word similar to nostalgia but – lonlier. A character in the film describes it as “a melancholy nostalgia for something that perhaps hasn’t happened. … a strong longing for something that isn’t the present.”

Here is the Wikipedia definition of saudade. I wonder if you have ever felt it?

“A deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melencholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. One English translation of the word is missingness, although it might not convey the feeling of deep emotion attached to the word "saudade." Stronger forms of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died.

Saudade was once described as ‘the love that remains’ after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence.”

The characters throughout the film exhibit a wrenching painful attachment to that which has been lost – a partner, a home, a child, an object that is associated with one who has been lost to them. Each of them feels the loss of something and cannot bear to let go of objects that help them stay somehow connected. One of the characters reflects on how the value we place on a lost loved one is transferred to some “holy object” or objects.

“Theses are our artifacts, our scars, objects, memories - Items that are tangible, memorable. We live our lives and ask, ‘What do we leave behind?’ … ‘What is the value of anything?’ ‘Can what we hold in our hands be the same as what we hold in our hearts?’”

The ancient Stoics tried to combat saudade (though they spoke no Portuguese) by trying to disconnect themselves from all attachments to people and the things that represent them. “With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved,” says Epictetus the Stoic,

“Remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.”

“Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things” He continues. The only insurance one can have against the ravages of saudade involves disconnecting meaning from those people that one loves and objects that that serve as surrogates for those that one loves.

I suppose I am being hit particularly hard by this phenomenon because I have been helping my parents downsize their possessions in preparation for a move. I have been saving boxes of my dad’s sermons and old photographs of my family and of me as a boy and a young man. I have been rescuing art that I created when I was in first grade and in middle school and in college – old papers I wrote – yearbooks, my high school sportsmanship trophy – the trophy I won for memorizing more verses than any other camper at Camp Berea in 1974. I have been saving specimens of my mom’s rock collection and slides my grandfather took when driving around Turkey in the 1950’s. I have saved maps that I drew in Israel and a picture of an old girlfriend and the drawing I drew of Skyler the day he was born and a note he wrote me when he first learned to write and a photo of Simeon chipping ice in the swamp (am I mistaken or can I still hear the sound?) and letters I wrote my parents from Israel.

Days are full of strong longings for things that aren’t the present.

Some days I admire those Stoics. Some days I wonder what planet they lived on.

Question for Comment: Brazilians officially celebrate “Saudade Day” on Janurary 30. I wonder if we set aside a day to attend to our grief if it would intrude on our lives less on the other days?